How to make POE 2 better game considering initial vision

Hey! This is my first that kind of post, I love both games, I am a casual player, started playing POE1 starting from breach league, only skipped Kalandra and Necro leagues.

So I watched recent video of Neeko2lo where he came to conclusion that initial vision is basically dead after multiple re-iterations and changes in 0.2.0 and especially in 0.3.0 where streamers and seasoned players zoom through maps that are full of abyss monster swarms with visual clutters from effects from abilities that you can’t see anything around you. And all that clearly looks like POE1 if not worse than that.

I understand that core POE2 audience is obviously people who play the first game in addition to new people who like exactly the second game. I understand that there will be people who disagree, you can’t be liked by everyone, nonetheless I that Neeko2lo video made me come to this solution.

This is what I think could help save the initial vision yet keep many changes that’ve been made so far. Though it would require quite significant rework to how game works in late game.

In general I see no significant problem in campaign, here and there some changes will be made anyway, I have nothing to add to that. Campaign is quite slow and its relative difficulty forces people to use combos due to lack of good gear. What comes to endgame, here is what I think could spice up typical POE1-like gameplay and force people into more thoughtful combo gameplay.

Rework difficulty of all mobs: 1) rise tiers of all monsters, white trash mob – now rare mob, magic monster – now rare with many modifiers, rare monster – boss/rogue exile level enemy, a boss – “to be honest no idea”, maybe boss with extra modifiers, or just boss that is a bit stronger than the “new rare”, tiers could be different, but you get the idead. Monster packs could be smaller to some degree to compensate that obviously, drop tables should be reworked as well. (I added comment to Neeko2lo video, there I suggested replacing all mobs with bosses or boss level enemies, I don’t believe GGG would ever do that, though that could be fun experience IMO). When there are not singular but many many not casually killable enemies this could “maybe” even make people use shields to block/parry more often 😉

What is behind this proposition: usually all oneshot kills of bosses are combos, people prepare some combos that kill the boss. But you can’t just mindlessly zoom through the map if there are no trash mobs, 10+ boss-like enemies and bunch of rares with multiple modifiers, pack sizes should probably be a bit smaller, maybe less packs of monster to compensate, but this forces absolutely different approach. Obviously in high end people might find ways to speed up the process, but by reaching that power level you would kill Arbiter in seconds anyway.

Small commentary to all the zoomers. Slower gameplay is not bad if it is rewarded well. Why are you zooming through the maps? To get more loot faster but not for the count of cleared maps, right? It takes you 1-2 minutes to clear a map. But what if one map takes you 10-20 minutes to clear but is as rewarding as 10 other maps? Isn’t it the same? You cleared one map with stronger enemies and took more time to kill, but you got more or less the same amount of loot.
That is the general idea I wanted to share with people and hopefully GGG staff.

Not interested in an ARPG with runescape ass combat.
Also not interested in POE playing like grim dawn / the other absolute failures that nobody cares about.

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JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

Not interested in an ARPG with runescape ass combat.
Also not interested in POE playing like grim dawn / the other absolute failures that nobody cares about.

Then this game is for nobody but content farmers then.You can't keep speeding up monsters and bosses to astronomical degrees then turn the player into an encumbered Souls character with a shitty dodge roll.

I love exploding 300 monsters per second, but i also love slow & methodic approach.

The only mob that currently add some "strategy" to the fight, is the one that reflect with shield (in the tomb of consort act1), coming back in end game maps. It's basically the reflect mod, but with a visual and possibility to avoid it.

More mobs with special ability like this, handcrafted as group of enemys that force player to not zoom zoom, can do the tricks. Then the rng would be about "what squad of enemy" more than the composition of the squads. With enough ammount of mob type and enough squad composition, it can provide something interesting and not just always the same gimmick (per exemple, god of war 2018 lack of different type of enemy to compose these squad).

And still keep the events that provide swarmy packs that you can explode, del, breach, altars and abyss, but freezing the natural mobs of the map while the event happen (or teleporting us in another plan of reality).

Ye i know, i ask something almost impossible, it's more "an ideal" to aspire.

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Megami83Tensei#9384 wrote:

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JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

Not interested in an ARPG with runescape ass combat.
Also not interested in POE playing like grim dawn / the other absolute failures that nobody cares about.

Then this game is for nobody but content farmers then.You can't keep speeding up monsters and bosses to astronomical degrees then turn the player into an encumbered Souls character with a shitty dodge roll.

I'm willing to bet that well over 90% of players aren't content creators. Probably well over 95%.